What people are learning, though, is that nothing from Oracle is ever really free, it's simply deferring time evaluating licensing terms and legal costs into the future.
Before: "Personal use is when you install the product on one or more PCs yourself and you make use of it (or even your friend, sister and grandmother). It doesn't matter whether you just use it for fun or run your multi-million euro business with it." [1]
Now: "Personal Use and/or Educational Use expressly exclude any use of the Product for commercial purposes or to operate or run a business, organization, governmental organization, or educational institution." [2]
Oracle does track downloads and will make inquiries if they suspect commercial use.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20161108235524/https://www.virtu... [2] https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...
I started out using Parallels at first, but can't see having to continually pay to upgrade, especially when I'm mainly using Linux images although I do run a copy of Windows periodically.
VirtualBox is free and supported by Oracle.